I was living at a dorm and one night a fire broke out in the kitchen that I was sharing with 16 other people. The firemen came and evacuated the whole place. We were standing outside in the cold for quite a while as they put out the fire and made sure it wouldn't start up again. When we were finally allowed back inside, the kitchen had turned into a black melted mess. It was completely ruined. Fortunately it hadn't spread to any of our rooms, so sometime after midnight I was able to settle down and try to come to terms with what had happened. It had been one of the scariest nights of my life.

Well, this took place in 1995. Greatest Hits had just been released. Instead of going to bed, I put the album in my CD player and listened to the four bonus tracks on repeat for at least an hour. Bruce was such a big part of my life that listening to the reunited E Street Band was one of the most comforting and reassuring things I could imagine doing. The gentle tones of "Secret Garden", the synthesis of the sax and harmonica at the end of "Blood Brothers", the fear expressed in "Murder Incorporated"... though none of those songs had anything to do with the actual situation, they were still exactly what I needed.

So why am I talking about that now? Well, I was just watching a DVD of outtakes from the Blood Brothers documentary. There's a lot of footage of the show Bruce and the band did at Tramps in New York City in connection with the "Murder Incorporated" video. The whole thing just brought me back to that year of 1995. And it made me think of how much had happened to Bruce in the 10 years that followed his incredible popularity of 1985. If you read my post further down about the Paris show in 1985, you get an impression of a man who knew exactly who he was, what he wanted, and how to get it... and who could do nothing wrong. Bruce may not agree if you asked him, but compared to 1995, that's sure how it seemed.

1995 was a year that pointed in all directions. It seemed like Bruce didn't have a clue what to do next. He had just scrapped an album of introverted "relationship" songs that a few months earlier had been all but finished. But the man who 10 years earlier could do nothing wrong, was now unsure of himself. He had just seen the first major backlash of his career with the cool reception of the Human Touch/Lucky Town albums, both on the artistic and the commercial level. He was no longer infallible. He was no longer beyond criticism. He needed something safe, and what was safer than reuniting the E Street Band and releasing a sure commercial success: a greatest hits album?

That summer the rumor mill was alive with talk of a full-blown E Street Band tour. Never late to spot a business opportunity, the Badlands fan club in the UK was even taking orders for concert trips across the pond to see Bruce and the reunited E Street Band. To this date I still have no clue if there was actual talk in the Bruce camp of doing a tour at that point or if it was all pure speculation. Whatever the case, it didn't happen for another four years. Instead, all of a sudden a gaping fan world saw Bruce over here in Europe playing "Hungry Heart" at a café in Berlin with a bunch of German musicians in order to make a video of it. It was completely surreal. I remember getting a call about it from one of my friends and simply not believing it. And I remember interrupting a cat-sitter job for my parents and riding 30 miles on my bike to my school in order to get on the Internet and check the LuckyTown Digest to have it confirmed. What the hell was the man thinking? There were even rumors of him doing a whole café tour like that in European cities. I was petrified that he would suddenly show up at some weird place in Copenhagen and me not being there.

Bruce, whatever you do, please never pull a stunt like that again.

Well, it soon became clear that this was a one-off thing. Bruce hadn't completely lost it. But what was perhaps worse, he seemed to have completely lost his voice. It hadn't sounded too good for his performances with the E Street Band earlier that year, but when footage was released from his Berlin stint, you started to seriously worry. His voice was all but gone. He could hardly make it through "Thunder Road". The voice that had woken up entire cities and surrounding areas with its "prisoner of rock 'n' roll" doomsday exclamation 10 years earlier, was now all but a whisper. Now, that was scary.

Adding to the confusion of what the heck was going on, just as all hope of a permanent E Street Band reunion had been given up, they did another mini-reunion in September for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame opening in Cleveland. The good news was that the voice was more or less back. The bad news was that I have rarely seen a more lackluster performance by Bruce and the band. Even then it seemed pretty obvious that a permanent reunion was not in the cards at that point.

So it could hardly be described as a surprise when soon after Bruce did his umpteenth 180 degree turn of the year and announced an acoustic solo album and tour. Whatever your opinion about the Ghost of Tom Joad album and subsequent tour, when you think about it, it was probably pretty inevitable. He had been talking about a solo tour since 1987. He needed to get that out of his system before he was ready to look back or forward. An E Street Band tour at that point was simply not what he wanted and it might have ended up a disaster and the last we would have ever seen of the band.

So maybe everything happens for a reason. Back at the dorm we got a brand new kitchen that we had so desperately needed even before the fire, and four years later we got a killer E Street Band reunion when Bruce was all good and ready for it.

I'm still working on the reason for that "Hungry Heart" video, but as soon as I figure it out, I'll let you know.

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